The present invention generally relates to collection and recycling of waste materials and, more particularly, to a debagging apparatus for separating waste material from plastic bags that are used in the collection of such material.
In many jurisdictions, legal restrictions have been recently passed prohibiting the dumping of earth grown materials into landfills. Therefore, waste material such as brush, leaves, tree trimmings, and grass clippings must be kept out of the main waste stream destined for landfills. This means that earth grown materials have to be handled separately from the main waste stream. In some municipalities, leaves are collected at curbside and from streets by using vacuum and mechanical pickup machines before being transported to a recycling site. Tree trimmings and brush are handled at curbside, but separately from leaves, by feeding them into chipping and shredding machines which reduce them to small particles. These small particles are then loaded into trucks and transported to a recycling site.
Grass clippings are typically gathered from lawns and collected in plastic bags when lawns are mowed. Grass clippings amount to a sizable percentage of the main waste stream, especially during the summer months. Plastic bags of grass clippings are produced in relatively small quantities in many, widely-dispersed locations. For example, a single home may produce three to four bags of grass clippings each week. Currently, bagged grass clippings are picked up at curbside and then hauled to a compost processing site. At the processing site, the grass clippings must be emptied from the plastic bags before entering the processing equipment.
There is a pressing need for improving and semiautomating the collection of waste material such as bagged grass clippings and leaves in order to make recycling of waste material more efficient.